Denver Neighborhoods With the Most Violent Crimes So Far in 2017

Violent crime has gone up in Denver during the first half of 2017 as compared to the same period last year. But there's a wide variation in the number of these offenses from area to area. Denver Police Department statistics for all 78 officially designated city neighborhoods, as shared below, show that two of them didn't register a single violent crime through the initial six months of this year, while one was the setting for more than 150 offenses in the category.

At this writing, the DPD has compiled crime data from January through May of 2017. The following graphic reveals that the number of violent crimes — specifically homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — are collectively up for each month of the year thus far in Denver proper over figures registered twelve months earlier.

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More details, and more specifics, are accessible via the Denver Crime Map, an indispensable online tool overseen by the Denver Police Department. The map divides violent crime into three categories: murder, robbery and aggravated assault. It then provides the number of offenses in each neighborhood as well as crime density, a stat that reveals how many violent incidents took place per square mile.

The latter metric is a better way to compare neighborhoods that differ widely in terms of population and size than the number of crimes as a whole, and we've used it to rank them from one to 78. But we've provided the number of offenses, too, and as you'll see, there's often a close correlation between the violent crime total and the number that took place per square mile.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of surprises lurking within the digits, which correspond to the period between January 1 and July 1 of 2017. Some of them are happy, including the extremely low number of violent-crime incidents in many high-profile areas. But those who live and work in the heart of the city will find fewer reasons to cheer.

Michael Roberts has written for Westword since October 1990, serving stints as music editor and media columnist. He currently covers everything from breaking news and politics to sports and stories that defy categorization.